Exhibiting at Technically Brilliant Art in Warrington

Every day I practice my art...

...decaying roses...

 ...take my camera out of it's case...

...family fun west end beach Morecambe...

...take a walk and look for inspiration.

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..fishing competition from the east prom Morecambe...

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Sometimes nothing seems to stand out ...and then sometimes it's as f I have to take the pics...snap the clicker and hope for the best.

..cabinets of curiousities Warrington Museum...

I've been exhibiting for quite a few years. Filey, Brighton, Grange-over-Sands, WCAF and this grand gallery in Warrington.

Technically Brilliant Art in The Golden Square Mall in Warrington.

The four works exhibited are pics taken in Mount Stewart NT Co. Down N. Ireland....

...at the newly revived rose garden in the wonderful walled garden there...

 inspired by the works of Georgia O'Keefe

an American artist working in New Mexico in the desert.

I've been told that Lady Edith planned it in the early 20thc. as a place for the women at the house to walk and gather roses...however it was abandoned when her husband died....how tender.

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Grand that it is now having a new lease of life...and worth a visit.

This pic of my herb garden is the closest I get to a walled garden...mainly fences!

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A Poem for Thursday..."Here a Button is Missing"...

This is my safe place.

Looking out of the old blue french windows with which we honoured the wooden hut. 

 We call it

"The summerhouse".

I miss it so much in the cold winter months.

This winter especially...with so many situations to worry about in the news...on the streets...in the world.

It takes so little to tip the balance of peace.

In families...in countries...in the soul, the heart, the spirit.

So when I read Gunter Grass's poem.."Open Wardrobe", and the little line about a lost button...

....it caught on a hook in my brain....and I thought how little it takes to tip the scales 

and unbalance our lives.

A button is missing and

I’m missing the button.

My coat can’t be shut.

The air is chilly

And I want to close my coat.

I chose a coat today

And a button is missing.

“So search the floor”, they said.

I search the floor under the coat stand.

Such a small inconvenience

And really insignificant at such a time.

But a button would close the coat

And a closed coat is protection.

The dark floor hides what it finds

Squirrels away secrets

Like magpies.

How little we need if we lose a button.

.

Geraldine Snape

March 2022

Good news...the plum tree has excelled itself with it's sweet white blossom.

Other news...the weather has changed and I can only pray that the blossom is not destroyed...

It takes so little.

Stay well.

x

…"here a button is missing"...prompt from...

"Open Wardrobe" by Gunter Grass.

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A Poem for Thursday. " Twenty Three Trees"

 

This blessed land where I like to dream that my uralt forefathers from the borderlands of Dumfries and Galloway... walked their cattle to markets in the south.

*

Always a dreamer.

*

All will be well.

x

I'm having a go at "biodynamic" gardening...here goes.

I'm starting..as I mean to go on..in the summerhouse, reading up on the quarters of the moon and the best times to sow seeds for annual flowers. Just getting my facts in a row!

So, apparantly, the days leading up to the full moon are the best days to get the seeds into the greenhouse and wait for results.

I've done that with around ten packets...given from the oldest grandgirl as a wonderful present at Christmas.

I hope I don't let her down.

In the meantime...waiting time...I'm walking the field and looking for new life and in particular for spring blossom again. The crows are having to build a new nest...the three storms decimated their one from last year. they mate for life these two and live in the top of a birch.

Did you know that March is the birch month in Ukraine...Bereza .

I often find treasure as I walk...the earth throws up stones and bones from the long gone past...

...here's a ... poem...automatic writing... from the field.

Oak bone

Apple bone

Buried in the corner bone

Dog bone/hope bone in the brambles and the wild wild flowers.

Shadows on the tool shed/hen shed/ wood shed/

Summer shed/ belief shed.

-

And in the high woods

The fretting crows

Open again

Open refrain.

A white crocus in the middle of the field...planted by noone...just fancied the spot I suppose.

A faithful flowering currant  up in the top right corner...just keeps on living. ...keeps on giving.

Made of hardy stuff...forsythia in the woodland.....shares itself around...generous to a fault.

Ah yes ..this is a favourite..Japanese chotolate vine...we once had some fruit...looked like cocoa pods...purple...teeny weeny dark pink flowers ...what's not to love.

If I get down on my hands and knees under the old hedge...I can find these shy cowslips spreading their baby plantlets...multiplying....fecund.

There are exotics I can't remember the names of... or even when I planted them..well it's 40 years this year since we took on this patch of Old Penketh Heathland.

As with lockdown, I'm walking the field and looking for beauty to restore calm to my soul,

for the situation of the moment needs a place and time to gather thoughts and prayers for peace.

Ukraine

When it's over

Let it be over.

I've planted sunflowers

Thrown the bird seed in

A pot and I'm waiting for the 

Soft green heads to appear.

I hope that when the flowers arrive

In all their fibonacci glory

We'll still be here

To give the garden thanks.

*

Tomorrow the sun will rise

Amazing

The fig tree is blossoming.

*

Much love.

Gerry

A Poem for Thursday...."The Turn of the Seasons"

The Turn of the Seasons 

My thoughts begin with water in the rill

Full-ferned and moss-muddlied. there sits

A crow on the topmost level of

A bowing birch. above it still the waning moon

Silver-sailing in a mourning sky.

*

The magi of mushrooms and

Pale greeness of lichen and I am

Mind-spinning at the turn of the seasons

There a gathering of starlings

Sitting slanted on an earthen roof and

*

Wood pigeons murmuring a pied -melody

Where trees scarlet and leaves bud

The turning prowls through my memories

Sometimes there are assembling hours

And heaven beckons. sometimes a glimpse

* 

Of seedful poppies in strawberry beds

Scattering feral banks on fecund land.

*

Here are the daffodils to give joy and bring hope.

We can but believe.

Hope remains.

Be kind.

A Poem for Thursday.

 I started blogging in 2010...I had no idea what I was doing!

But one of my weekly posts was..

"A Poem for Thursday"

Someone asked,  why?...well I was born on a Thursday...and Thursday's child has far to go.

I got as far from Belfast as Warrington...so not far!!

I thought I should start it again  now that lockdown is over, and I'm able to get to Bold Street Writers in Warrington,  and even Write on the Farm in Cumbria. 

The words are being set down in ink again.

This poem has been written after reading one by Gunter Grass..." Open Wardrobe"..suggested by Dr. Geraldine Green on Saturday's writing workshop.

 And I  took the line ..." a button is missing"..

a button is missing and

i'm missing the button

my coat can't be closed

the air is chilly and I want to close

 my coat. I chose a coat today

and a button is missing

search the floor, they said

i search the floor

under the coatstand

such a small inconvenience and

really insignificant at such a time

but a button would close the coat

and a closed coat is protection

the dark floor hides what it finds

squirrels away secrets like magpies

how little we need if we lose a button.

Geraldine Snape Feb 2022

An alley in Warrington town centre by Holy Trinity Church...and a pic photoshopped to honour the Ukrainians fighting for their homeland.

.Stay safe and be kind.

Collage in the Morecambe house...

 I studied for a BA fine art degree at The Wirral Met ...

...five years as a mature student...

...did'nt finish it, but after five years I felt I had some understanding of what it didn't mean!!

However during that time I collected some cartoons that were published each weekend in one of the papers....by Psillos...a Greek artist working in fashion and political cartoons.

The papers got filed in a folder in my studio and there they have been ..on the shelf with all the other arty stuff I've accumulated since 1999.

Until this week.

We were up at the bay house and the weather as you know was fierce...

...so no walking for us.

It only took a couple of hours and a pot of wallpaper paste and we clad an old wall outside the room at very top of the house under the eaves we call  ...

"The Club Room "

A  wall at the  top of the stairs and above it in the space made watertight by the builders last year.

...a painting of the seagulls that nest in our tall chimneys.

... the collage really brightens up the space..

...with a great smiling mouth in the middle!...

Some information about Psillos....

Demetrios Psillos has worked for John Galliano at the start of his career, he moved into Illustration and found success in New York with clients including Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, The New Yorker, Wallpaper and The New York Times. On returning to the UK, he continued working as an illustrator for The Times and Vogue. His successful illustrations for Nigella Lawson’s Food & Lifestyle columns led Demetrios to create the animated title sequences to the multi-award winning ‘Nigella Bites’ series. Love his gorgeous vivid colours! www.demetriospsillos.com

I'm planning another wall...I have lots of cartoons left still...but the clay man doesn't know that yet.

Keeping it as a surprise for his March birthday!!

paulatim

Just one day in February.

 On Friday we drove up the M6 to the old house in West End Morecambe and popped the heating on to warm it up.

...then  switched on the electric blanket to air the bed...

...and off to Arnside in the wind with big skies and rainbows over the Bay.

A train goes off to Whitehaven again.

It looks like a toy train as it trundles over the bridge on it's way up the west coast of Cumbria.

We sit and stare and promise...we'll do that trip this year.

 

...my mum loved seagulls...her favourite book was " Jonathan Livingston Seagull"...

Rosie bought it for her.

...we used to watch them from the old caravan at Ballyferris...fighting the winds and soaring over the wild seas.

...we were just in time to catch the "bore" as it powered it's way up the Kent ...roaring like a tractor...

...sudden downpours...

...caused many rainbows...I love a rainbow...it tells me " All will be well"...

(Julian of Norwich...thankyou..)

...then back to the old house and fish and chips with the blessed son...who now lives on The Bay.

A big fire in the grate and rugs around the knees and we talk of this and that ...

and are thankful.

A Record of January in the Hidden Garden at The Potters House Penketh.

 In so many ways this has been a miserable January.

Heavy skies and grey days.

Still in lockdown.

And then then after two years being very careful...covid takes me down and a fortnight later the potter seccumbs as well.

But the bonus is that we can still walk out of the kitchen door and down the path into the 

Hidden Garden.

It's taken on this title recently because of the number of locals who are amazed when they realise that an acre of the old Penketh Heath still lies up the narrow lane that separates our property from the terraces next to us.

...in the herb garden the oriental poppy leaves are rimed with frost...

...and on the wood shed japanese chocolate vines twist and dance...

...while the old bench waits for a gardener to take some rest... come the spring...

...honesty pods, fireweed seeds, teasels...

...much is left in the flower beds to dry and feed the birds with winter...cold and grey...

 

... on the summerhouse roof, mosses and sedums continue to thicken and hopefully become a green roof eventually...I throw extra sedum from a sedum garden up, though come spring nest building, the birds often throw it down again!

...low sun lines the grass..

..a thicket sprawls at the bottom of the field .. 

...the work at Knepp...rewilding..say that it's the thickets that are the nurseries for self seeded trees...and these trees are more likely to survive free from viruses rather than the imported ones.
 

...light is what the photographer and the artist look for...so I go out and find the light of the season..

...this winter light so different from the harsh light of mid summer,,,or the golden light of autumn...

..but I also go out to find the first flowers of the spring to restore my soul...soft pink early winter flowering japanese cherry here...

Health restored...free from virus

Soul restored..spring comes slowly, slowly...

Thankful again.